'86 Xaverians pay special tribute to teachers

KOLKATA: Paritosh Sarkar could have waited all his life for this moment. A car pulls up in front of his Thakurpukur home in the afternoon to take him to the institution he taught for 38 years. At 72, the last thing one expected was to be summoned' by his boys of '86 to receive their love. True, money can't buy love. But it was basically money (Rs 2 crore for all 37 of them) that made them very proud teachers this Children's Day.
Dream children.That's how Bengali teacher Sukumar Samajpati referred to them, taking a leaf out of Charles Lamb. But a quarter of a century after they had first put their unsure steps on this Park Street address, most of the 1986 batch of St Xavier's Collegiate School have shaped up into men of substance. Engrossed in pursing careers across the world, they did not forget those who had helped them do so. Together they set up a corpus of Rs 2 crore for all those who taught them during their 10-year stint. On Saturday, each of the 37 teachers who could make it to this moving occasion, received a cheque for Rs 2 lakh, a plaque, a special commemorative watch and pots of nostalgia.
"Sir, do you remember when I lost my father in class VIII and all of you had come to be with me during in shradh?" Niladri Mazumdar, head, sales and marketing (India), Seiko, asked Andrew Singh, his class-teacher in class VIII. Singh, who still teaches English and maths at the school, met the grateful gaze with his own tearful ones.
The primary school grounds (called small school those days) was overflowing with emotions on Saturday evening. Abhishek Khaitan, a solicitor who has come all the way from London, said: "We are what we are because of our teachers."
The sombre atmosphere quickly transposed to a lighter moment, when someone spotted laal murgi'. "Hey, there he goes," they said, spotting Mr Redden, who was referred to by his nick name even by his colleagues seated on the stage that was innovatively set with the school building as the background and the late Father Bouche's picture (principal in 1986) on one side. The teachers took their turns to "thank" their students for the "guru-dakshina", only to be fervently told over and over that the money was only a token of their love. "This is a debt that can't be repaid, but the class of '86 just wanted to say thank you'," insisted Jishnu Sen, chief operative officer, Grey.
The unique idea evolved over the last one year, when the class of '86 wanted to do something special for all those who had "dedicated their lives to ensure we had better ones." Father Jerome Francis, principal, St Xavier's Collegiate School, admitted: "One never expected this kind of bonding". The Father himself has a special bonding with the Class of 1986 he had joined the school that very year.